You are looking live at the best defensive player you’ve ever seen. You know who he is … but if you don’t, I’ll give you a few seconds to come up with a guess.

Stuck?

Well, don’t fixate upon a name. Lock on a position.

That’s Every Other Team’s Safety, and he’s been amazing all season. After nine games and somewhere around 400 solo tackles at or just before the second level, I could no longer resist the urge to get to know this guy a little better. Turns out the Mountaineers are quite familiar with his work. On some level, they even appreciate it.

“I’d be lying to say it isn’t something we think about,” running backs coach JaJuan Seider said. “It’s something we see when the coaches are watching film. And our guys know it, but you don’t want to keep beating a dead horse. You don’t want them to over-think it and try to second-guess how they run and change things up.”

The numbers are ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

In WVU’s nine games, an opponent’s safety has led the team in tackles six times, finished second (by one tackle) once and third (by two tackles) twice. Seven safeties have had at least 11 tackles. The Mountaineers have seen some monster performances, too.

TCU’s Derrick Kindred had 11 tackles Saturday and 10 were on his own. Oklahoma State’s Jordan Sterns made 14 solo tackles and 20 overall. Texas Tech’s Keenon Ward made 16 tackles and 11 without help. Towson’s Donnell Lewis had 14 solo tackles and 15 total and the other Tigers safety, Chris Carpenter, had 12 tackles.

That’s Sterns wiping out a big run … and maybe a touchdown run. And that’s fairly common, no?

Now, part of this is WVU’s offense. It creates space and isolation. One or two safeties have to keep an eye on the pass and react to the run, and often that happens in a do-or-die situation for everyone to see. But the safeties are doing and not dying. This sort of play happens across the field every game and WVU cannot figure out how to fix it, but the elixir is a combination of breaking a tackle, getting a big game again from Kevin White and getting something from Mario Alford, just so that the safeties have to be a little more honest than they have been.

This is not to say WVU’s run game is broken. It’s productive. It’s won games and performed admirably in wins. But it’s also been undone in some games and some losses. When you step back, the numbers are a mix of good and bad which settles up to be actually very ordinary.

The Mountaineers average 46.1 carries per game, the 22nd-highest total in the country. Only seven other teams in that top 50 average fewer than WVU’s 3.96 yards per carry. There have been only six runs of 25 yards or more. Four are between 25 and 28 yards and three came against Towson or Kansas. (Dreamius Smith, of course, has the other two. #Freemius)

And here comes Texas, with a safety that loiters around the line of scrimmage and one who’s charged with being the back stop in the secondary. Mykkele Thompson is a terrific athlete in the back and also a really interesting kid. Anyhow, he’s started every game at free safety and is fifth on a team loaded with tackling linebackers with 55 tackles.

In the past three games , he’s made 11, 9 and 5 tackles, and this is where things get fun. The senior was playing with a barrier the first 44 games of his career.

“It’s an interesting story about Mykkele,” Longhorns coach Charlie Strong said. “He wears glasses, so he had not been wearing contacts. I said to him, ‘Let me ask you, in a game, do you have contacts in?’ He’s like, ‘No.’ I said, ‘How do you see the ball?’ I said, ‘How do you see? Look at your glasses?’ ”

The glasses are not flattering, it seems, and cornerback Quandre Diggs, who says he is Thompson’s best friend, said “he looks weird and kind of looks soft” when he wears them. Well, that’s not the look for football, but Thompson never followed up with contacts. Just squints. This bothered Strong on some level until it reached its apex against Baylor, when Thompson was cooked by a double move.

“I said, ‘How long you been wearing glasses?'” Strong said. “He said, ‘Since the ninth grade.’ I said, ‘Okay, so your eyes have been wearing them since the ninth grade, so you’re telling me you can see a ball when it’s thrown?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I can see it.’ I said, ‘Okay, did you see that double move out there against Baylor? ‘He’s said, ‘Kind of late.’ “

That was all that needed to be said. “He’s got his contacts in now,” Strong said.

Let’s fix our gaze upon Thompson today. And let’s hit hard ourselves, right now.